


I'll Cover You

by wendalee



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-21
Updated: 2012-06-22
Packaged: 2017-11-05 18:05:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/409402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wendalee/pseuds/wendalee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where John becomes a widower with a baby following the death of his wife Mary. To deal with it, he moves back in to 221B.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the song "I'll Cover You" from the musical Rent.

He was fiddling with the knobs on his microscope when he heard the door open downstairs.

Ever since John had gotten married and moved out of the flat, it had been fairly quiet unless Sherlock needed noise. He would never directly come out and say it, but he missed John. He missed his loud thinking and his puttering about the flat, making tea and reading the newspaper and generally just being there.

In fact, if it wasn’t for Mrs Hudson, Sherlock wondered if anyone would notice if he died in the flat until the smell started wafting outside.

He could hear the general sounds of Mrs Hudson shuffling about, what sounded like her putting a pot of tea on and…the sounds of crying?

He put it out of his mind. It was probably just Mrs Turner from next door with one of her many grandchildren. He resumed looking at his slides when he heard footsteps on the stairs. Decidedly male footsteps. Very familiar decidedly male footsteps. He looked up just as John came through the doorway.

John, to put not too fine a point on it, looked terrible. Sherlock instantly deduced from his rumpled clothing, haggard look about his face, bloodshot eyes and mismatched socks that it had been at least two – no three – days since he had gotten any sleep.

“You look like hell,” was all Sherlock said.

“Once again, your powers of deduction steer you in the right direction. I feel like hell, Sherlock, and if you bothered to pick up your phone every now and then, you’d know why.”

Sherlock realized ruefully that he had ignored four of John’s calls in the last week and several of his text messages. He had been doing that a lot lately. It was a lot harder to talk to John now that he had moved out. It felt like there was a big, gaping hole in his life.

“I’m sorry, I’ve been on a particularly difficult case and now I have no assistant. Plus, you know I almost never talk on the phone.”

“I know, but what I needed to talk about with you is hard to convey via text message.”

“Well, then, what is it?” Sherlock may be good at deductions but he’s not a mind reader, which is evident because he never would have guessed the bombshell that John was about to drop on him.

“Mary’s dead,” John said in a hollow voice. He walked into the living room, moved all of the papers and manuals that Sherlock had piled on his chair in his absence, and sat. 

Sherlock was unsure of what to do, so he put the kettle on to boil. Whatever had happened was obviously going to require tea. Lots and lots of tea.

He walked into the living room, sat in his chair opposite John, and was silent. He knew that when John was ready to talk about it, he would.

John took a big shuddering breath and started talking. “Things have been…not so good at home. I mean, with Elizabeth and all –” _ah, yes,_ Sherlock said to himself, _John had had a daughter._ He had taken to immediately deleting all of the new facets of John’s new life without him from memory. “– it was supposed to be hard the first few months. But it just never got better. I think the doctors were concerned that she had post-partum depression but she would never address it.”

John’s eyes flashed with pain. Sherlock could see his conflict – he was the war hero who had dealt with his own bout of depression. He could conquer anything. He had not only managed to pick up the pieces after he came back from Afghanistan, but after Sherlock had ‘died.’ And here he was, in what should have been the happiest time of his life, suffering after his wife hadn’t been able to settle her own inner demons. Sherlock said nothing, just gave him a look that he hoped was sympathetic.

“I kept trying to get her to do anything to make it better. Go to a therapist. Do meditation. Do yoga. Go on a fun retreat with her friends. But all she wanted to do was sit inside with all of the curtains drawn. She couldn’t even take care of Elizabeth. I refused to leave her in that state, even though she begged me to go. She knew I wasn’t happy. We hadn’t even had sex since before the baby was born. But I refused. Watson men don’t quit.” John’s hand was firmly fisted and he looked as if he was restraining himself from beating the cushion of the chair to a bloody pulp. _He probably hasn’t been able to really show any emotion_ , Sherlock thought. _Not with a baby in the house._

“To make a long story short, I came home from the surgery two days ago. The car was gone. She was gone. There was no note. She wouldn’t take my calls. Her family hadn’t been in contact with her. Then, last night, two police officers showed up at my door. She drove the car off a cliff.” At the word _cliff_ , John completely broke down and sobbed. The kettle’s incessant whistling gave Sherlock his chance to give John a moment alone. He practically sprinted for the kitchen, pouring tea into mismatched cups and waited for the sniffling noises to die down. Grabbing the pair of cups, he took one back in to John.

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

In a rough voice, John said something that sounded like, “I can’t believe she’s done this to me.”

Sherlock nodded and sipped his tea in silence. He was dying to ask several questions, key of which was _Why are you here and not at your mother’s house or Mary’s mother’s house or your house, far away from me?_ But he said nothing.

“I haven’t been gone so long, Sherlock, that I can’t hear your mind whirring. I know you want to know why exactly I’m here.”

“Yes, but I was waiting until your grief had abated to ask it.”

John chuckled. “Basically, I was wondering if my bedroom is still free.”


	2. Chapter 2

It took approximately half a second for Sherlock to reply. “Of course it is. You can stay here as long as you’d like. I’ll have Mrs Hudson make up the bed with fresh sheets.” He knew that Mrs Hudson was _not his housekeeper_ , but he also knew that she loved to dote on John and with his current predicament, she’d do just about anything for him.

“There’s just one more thing before you tell me I can move in that you should know. I’ll be bringing Elizabeth with me.” John searched Sherlock’s face for any indication of what he was thinking.

Initially, Sherlock thought, _Oh god no. No no no. I simply cannot have an infant around, messing up my experiments and throwing toys around and screaming at really inopportune times._

“She’s downstairs with Mrs Hudson if you’d like to see her.” On that note, Mrs Hudson began climbing the stairs. Swaddled in her arms was this small ball of pink skin, with a head full of fair curly hair and blue eyes. Even though he knew that it was genetically impossible, it was as if this child was the perfect blend of Sherlock and John’s physical traits.

“Oh, John, she’s just a sweetheart. She obviously takes after her father.” After realizing the connotation her words might have taken, she hastily apologized and sat with the baby on the couch. Sherlock just stared passively.

“How, erm, long do you think you’ll be staying here, John?” Sherlock asked tentatively. He was already thinking that if John wasn’t planning on staying permanently, that he could figure out how to make it work with a baby in the house for a few days. A week tops.

“I’m not sure, actually. I obviously cannot go far. Going to my mother’s house is out of the question, with my job at the surgery. I absolutely cannot stay at Mary and I’s flat. Too many…memories. Both bad and good. This was the only place in the entire city where I was absolutely sure I would be welcomed with open arms, even if it was just until I could find a new flat.”

Sherlock saw that John was looking tentatively at his face. Sighing, he knew that everything John had said was true. He had nowhere else to go. “John, you can stay here as long as you like.”

Mrs Hudson squealed and gave a little clap. “I’ll just go and make up the bed. Will you be bringing a cot with you? If you need any help with the laundry or nappies or anything, just let me know…”

John smiled gratefully at Mrs Hudson, knowing that she was being overly sympathetic to his plight and hoping that soon, she wouldn’t have to do anything. He certainly didn’t want to take advantage of the older woman’s sympathy for his predicament. “Yes…if you could just watch Elizabeth for a few hours while I go back to my flat and get a few things to last us, that would be supremely helpful. Very difficult to get any of that done with a six-month-old around.”

“Understandable. Sherlock, dear, why don’t you go with him? It’ll take much less time and I’m sure John would appreciate _not being alone_ right now, don’t you think?” It didn’t take someone of Sherlock’s mental capacity to see what she was telling him, even though the absolute _last_ thing Sherlock wanted to do was to go see where John had been happily living for the last three years with his wife.

Sherlock called Mycroft and had a car sent over that was large enough for John to fit a fold-up cot and a pram in it. Mycroft knew about John’s wife, of course, but also knew that that this would be something that John would want to tell Sherlock himself. The car ride back to John and Mary’s flat was silent. Neither one wanted to say anything. John was barely holding himself together, Sherlock could sense, and Sherlock didn’t want to say anything, in case the floodgates opened again. He also didn’t want to change the subject, lest he seem like he didn’t care about Mary’s death. So, for once in his life, he said nothing.

“I’m sorry Mrs Hudson browbeat you into doing this. If you don’t want to go in with me…if you just want to wait in the car, that would be perfectly fine,” John finally said.

 _Yes,_ he wanted to scream. _That’s EXACTLY what I want to do._ “No, no, it’s fine. With two people, we’ll be able to get things done twice as quickly. 

They pulled up outside of a townhouse. John quickly scaled the stairs and unlocked the door, Sherlock could sense, before he lost his nerve. Sherlock walked in and surveyed the surroundings. Incredibly posh furniture adorned the living room, with every surface, it seemed, covered in photos. Photos of Mary and her family, Mary and John, Mary and her friends, Mary and Elizabeth. There were very few photos of John without Mary, but then again, John probably didn’t want a lot of pictures of the glory days of shooting people in the desert on his walls.

The kitchen was pristine – well, any kitchen compared to his was bound to be clean, as there were no body parts in the refrigerator in normal houses – and filled with stainless steel appliances. Sherlock quickly followed John into the first bedroom. It had a decidedly circus motif and was obviously the baby’s room.

John busied himself by grabbing a suitcase out of the closet and throwing all of the clothing in Elizabeth’s tiny dresser into it. He stuffed the remaining nappies he had into a plastic bag and pulled her fold-up pram out of the closet. “Would you help me with this?” he said, gesturing to the fold-up cloth cot.

Between the two of them – with a lot of swearing – they managed to get it folded up. Somewhat. “It still doesn’t look like it did when it came out of the box. I think we folded it up wrong.”

“Is it smaller?” Sherlock said, wiping sweat off his forehead. On the list of things that he never thought he would be doing, dealing with a baby bed was at the very top of them.

“Well, yes.”

“Then it’s not wrong.” Picking it up, Sherlock started hefting it and the pram down the stairs and into the waiting car. He figured he would give John a bit of privacy for packing up his own personal effects. The cot fit in the trunk of the car, but just barely. He went back up for the rest of the baby’s things and fit them in the trunk. Knowing John, he knew that he wouldn’t have a lot of things, but he wasn’t sure exactly how long this was all going to take. Unpacking was the simple part of moving, but it was packing that generally took forever. You weren’t just packing _things_ , you were packing _memories_ and memories took a long time to go through.

Sherlock popped around the corner to a coffee shop while he was waiting for John and picked up their usual coffee order before pausing to wonder if John still liked his coffee with a shot of cinnamon syrup and whipped cream. Maybe Mary had forced him to give up frivolous coffee drinks. Maybe he never even liked it in the first place.

Everything that he knew about John had radically shifted in the past three years. He never thought anything would come between him and his blogger. He was decidedly wrong.

 

**

 

_He could even remember the day that John moved out. It was raining, which was not an uncommon London occurrence, but it fit his mood on that particular day so Sherlock logged it. He never thought John would leave him. Once he came back from the dead, he thought everything would go on as planned._

_He never counted on the fact that in his absence, John had moved on. He had met Mary. He was going to marry her and nothing Sherlock said could talk him out of it._

_Sherlock knew that there was something deeper, something unspoken between him and John than just normal friendship and he almost was able to articulate it on that day, but he couldn’t even bring himself to look John in the eye. He was afraid if he did that he would beg John to stay. Then he wondered for days afterward why he didn’t._

_It wasn’t just that there wasn’t someone there to make him tea and fetch him his phone and be his sounding board. He missed his presence. He missed his laugh. He missed the general warmth that John brought to the apartment._

_Since he had moved out, the apartment had been cold. Almost as if it had a draft. But what was missing wasn’t higher-quality insulation, it was John._

_Mrs Hudson fretted about him, he knew she did. But it was his foolish pride that wouldn’t allow him to say anything about it to John. He just let it be. He found himself texting John less and less. It hurt too much._

_**_

 

“Ready to go?” John said, startling Sherlock out of his reverie. John’s eyes were watery and he was clutching his old Army duffel bag and a small box that Sherlock knew to contain some of his Army mementos. Sherlock nodded and motioned towards the car.

“For you,” Sherlock said, handing John his now lukewarm coffee.

John took an experimental swig and smiled his first real smile. “You remembered exactly how I like it.”


	3. Chapter 3

In the first week, Mrs Hudson was a godsend. She helped care for the baby as if it was her own. John was so depressed and distraught that he could hardly get out of bed for the first two days, except for when he was taking care of his vital needs and caring for Elizabeth. Mrs Hudson frequently took the baby during the day, which allowed John to basically wallow in his own misery.

“Poor dear, he really does need the extra sleep,” Mrs Hudson said to Sherlock as she rocked the baby on the couch 

“All he’s been doing is sleeping since he got here,” Sherlock grumped.

“From what I recall, when a certain someone who may or may not be upstairs left, there was a certain someone who didn’t shower for three days and badgered me into bringing him regular infusions of tea.”

“That was completely different.” 

“Yes, yes it was, dearie. John didn’t die. And you didn’t have a child to care for after he left.” Mrs Hudson’s words were softly admonishing, reminding Sherlock that John has it much worse than he ever did. “I just don’t understand how anyone could leave this beautiful baby behind,” she cooed at the bundle in her hands.

Sherlock chanced a glance at the baby. He had never spent any real time around babies. Neither he nor Mycroft had ever even entertained the concept of starting families of their own. Babies got in the way of his work and were impractical houseguests. Plus, as he was a male, he had never had a babysitting job as a teenager. This squirming bundle in Mrs Hudson’s arms might just be the biggest mystery he’s ever faced.

“Do you want to hold her?” Mrs Hudson asked, seeing him look at the child.

Sherlock was apprehensive, but didn’t want to say _No, no that’s quite alright_ too quickly. “I…erm…have no idea _how_ to hold a baby. I’ve never held one before.”

“It’s alright, not many men have before they have one of their own.” Mrs Hudson crossed the room to where Sherlock was seated in his chair, positioned his hands properly and softly set the baby down.

Sherlock’s first impression of the child was that she was heavier than he had imagined. He heard a soft coo as he rocked her just slightly. He took a big whiff and immediately started cataloguing things – from the exact scent of her hair ( _a very light, almost floral aroma_ ) to the size of her tiny hands and feet to approximate weight ( _26 pounds_ ) and the feel of her in his arms. Suddenly, he was struck with a desperate need and shifted the baby to one arm. With the other, he picked up his notepad and a pencil and quickly began sketching the infant’s face.

It was a crude sketch, but he wanted to capture it the way she looked right now. He could refine it later. Despite the maelstrom surrounding her, the child looked completely peaceful. She had no idea of what was going on, didn’t know that she would never get to know her mother, that her father was currently a wreck, that she was currently being held by a man who had never held a baby before. She was an innocent victim. All of the cases that he had ever dealt with that involved children – those cases that he hated and loathed and warned Lestrade that he didn’t want to take – he suddenly was overwhelmed. Children often had no say in what happened to them. He hated those cases because children were unreliable and you had to treat them specially – with adults, you could be as brash as you wanted, but you had to treat children as if they were made of porcelain. He now understood exactly why. He was overcome suddenly with an innate sense of protectiveness, like he just wanted to hold this little bundle forever and shelter her so nothing more bad could happen to her.

_She was perfect, despite it all._

He lowered his lips to the baby’s forehead, feeling her soft skin against his and inhaling her smell. It was almost indescribable.

“Are you…sniffing my child?” Sherlock jumped about a mile at the sound of John’s voice as he entered the room.

Sherlock could feel the blush creeping up his face as he struggled to not jostle Elizabeth. _Hrm, Elizabeth sounds too formal. Shall I call her Beth? Or Lizzie? Yes, Lizzie. Like Lizzie Bennett._

“I’ll take her off your hands if you don’t want to hold her anymore.” Sherlock was stunned at the notion that he didn’t want to hold this precious baby anymore, and then wondered where that feeling had come from. She was a comforting weight in his arms. He found he wasn’t the least bit tired and felt he could just hold this baby forever.

He unwillingly held her out for John to take. John was, after all, her father.

“What’s this?” he asked, seeing the pen and pencil on the arm of Sherlock’s chair.

“Oh, it’s nothing. I was just doodling.”

John snatched it up from him and glanced, a slow smile creeping on his face. “This is…quite good, actually, Sherlock. Question…when did you become a baby person?”

“About five minutes ago, actually.” He suddenly registered that while he was staring intently at the child in his arms, Mrs Hudson had slipped out of the room and left him alone. “Listen…John…you shouldn’t be in any rush to leave. I can live with the baby and you can stay here as long as you like.”

There was a bit of relief mixed in with apprehension on John’s face. “Do you really mean it? Can you really live with this? Because she will occasionally scream and cry. Sometimes in the middle of the night. She will throw things. And she won’t always be this small and cute. I want you to really think about this before extending an open invitation.”

Sherlock took a split second and realized that it wasn’t just Lizzie he wanted to protect – it was John. John had always protected everyone else, but it had never dawned on him that he might need protecting one day. “I’m sure. Absolutely positive. Don’t even think about removing one thing of yours from this flat.”

“I am going to be gone this weekend. I’m almost finished packing our things, but I’ve got to go to Mary’s parents’ house for the wake and funeral.”

“Do you need a car? I can have Mycroft arrange one –”

“No, that’s okay, we’ll take the train.”

“Absolute nonsense. You have a baby and all that a baby entails. If you prefer, I can get you a rental car.”

“I don’t drive. I haven’t had a license since before Afghanistan.”

“Then at least let Mycroft’s car service take you. That way, you don’t have to worry about anything and it can be a pleasant ride.”

John sighed. He could tell he was on the losing end of this battle. “Fine. I’ll need to leave in the next hour or so.” Before he was even finished talking, Sherlock was firing off a text.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so, so sorry that it took me so long to update this. I went on vacation for a week and since I got back, I haven't been able to muster the wherewithal to do much more than watch bad television.
> 
> If you've continued to read this/bookmarked it or are just reading for the first time, I thank you.


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